mothers who kill

[emmacraigie]

I've recently written a book, Chocolate Cake with Hitler, which tells the story of the children of Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. The six children were poisoned by their mother at the end of WWII. She claimed that they were too good for the world that would follow the collapse of the nazi regime. Do you know other instances of mothers who have killed their children believing they were protecting them?

That bit in the film Downfall is chilling.

pssst... is this a plug for your book or do you actually want answers?

I think that's a fair question, but I actually want answers, it is something I'd like to write about more. Researching the book I found the psychology of Magda Goebbels fascinating. The fact that she poisoned her children is usually regarded as an example of the monstrousness of the Nazi ideology, and no doubt that is at least partly true, but I'm interested in whether women with completely different ideologies have sometimes been driven to the same conclusion?

I always feel like I should say I could never understand a mother who could kill her children, but in her own twisted way she showed the utmost love - forcing herself to kill her own babies because she truly believed that a non-nazi world would be so terrible.

She definitely felt she was forcing herself, she wrote to her oldest son Harald, who was not in the bunker but was a British prisoner of war, "God grant that I retain the strength to do the last and most difficult thing."

Although she went on about the "nobility" of Nazism, I think the real reason she killed all her children was that the thought of their getting into the hands of the Russians was more than she could bear. At least, that's my interpretation from seeing Downfall. The Nazis knew that the atrocities they had visited upon the Russians and countless others would come back to haunt them when the Russians entered Berlin, which they were just about to do. One of the features of the Nazi ideology seems to be a complete lack of respect for the sanctity of human life.

I can think of a few in literature - Medea, for one. And of course it's common in nature. Here's an interesting article:

www.rightgrrl.com/carolyn/pinker.html

sounds great just ordered it from Amazon

I think that is true, particularly once she was in the bunker - but why did they take the children into the bunker - all the other Nazis sent their kids to safety. That didn't have to put them at risk of russian cruelty in the first place...

thanks for that link, its a very interesting piece.

and the Medea link is interesting - killing your children to hurt your ex-partner is something one reads about men doing much more than women.

Didn't some japanese women kill their children to protect them from the americans. The japanese propoganda told them that the americans were barbaric. I seem to remember seeing a programme about it. Also the babies being smothered in a cave to keep the silence and then mothers throwing themselves out of the cave into the sea.

Since this has been posted in Adult Fiction, there is a very evocative scene in World War Z that details a group of mothers killing their children to prevent them being eaten by the approaching zombie horde. It reminded me of something I read at school, about Jewish people driven into a building by a persecuting mob, who killed their children rather than let them be killed by the enemy. Think it was around the 12th century (school seems a similar age away, so apologies for lack of detail).

What about the mothers who can't? It's referred to obliquely in The Road (Cormac MacCarthy, discussed loads here earlier in the year) and also the mother in On The Beach by Neville Shute - even though they are all dying of radiation sickness she can't bring herself to kill her daughter and her husband has to do it. It is an interesting idea. What takes some women (real or fictional) over that boundary where you can do such an 'unnatural' thing?

Cyteen, the incident you are thinking of is the massacre at Clifford's Tower in York. So distressing.

Aha, thanks vorpal. Although I sort of wish I had imagined it, iyswim.

Twelfth century York - that is a very sobering thought. Thanks for identifying that incident, Vorpal.

When I was researching Chocolate Cake with Hitler I discovered the extent to which medieval England was an inspiration for the Nazis - for instance the idea of forcing Jews to wear yellow badges originated in medieval England. At the moment I am reading a very dry, but fascinatingly detailed book called Stones we Cannot Eat, which is a history of poverty in the town of Bruton, Somerset. In it I discovered that according to an Act of 1697 in order to receive poor relief "the poor" had to wear had to wear a badge on their shoulder. This was a national law, and in Bruton it was followed throughout the eighteenth century.

I know that's off the subject... very interesting about the The Road and On the Beach.

Emma, off topic is good ... That is v. interesting about the identification of people receiving poor relief in that period. I know all about 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor in Victorian England but no idea that such horrid regimes existed earlier.

The Clifford's Tower history is horrible and I do know what you mean. I was at university in York in the late 80s and the National Front used to hold rallies at the Tower - vile.

Vorpal, that's so shocking about the National Front. Thanks again.

what about the mass suicide of that cult. the one led by Jim Jones?

or Masada - though do we know if the mothers killed their own children there?

Thank you - two very interesting comparisons. I checked out Masada and found the following:
ten people who were chosen by a lot killed everyone else and then committed suicide. In the morning Romans entered a silent fortress and found only dead bodies. Two women and five children survived the mass suicide by hiding in a cave.
so it really depends on who those ten people were, but certainly it seems that some mothers must have consented to the killing of their children.
I think the Jim Jones eg is interesting because as in the goebbels case - but unlike Masada -people voluntarily got themselves into these extreme situations.